Everyday Powers Tarot: The Tarot Court

Each suit of the Minor Arcana is made up of 14 cards divided into two parts: the pip cards, numbered from one to 10, and the court cards, which are variously known as the page, knight, queen and king, or the princess, prince, queen and king. A few specialized decks use different names for these cards, but these are the most common. The court cards have particular significance because they are often chosen by readers as significators -- a card to represent the person for whom the reading is being drawn.

Reading court cards is challenging. Many of the books on Tarot spend a lot of time assigning personality traits to each of the court cards, but say little about how to interpret them when they fall in a reading. They may represent real people in the querent's life, specific traits in the querent, or an event. To make things even more confusing, some analysts assign specific meanings to certain combinations of cards. We'll talk more about those associations on the pages devoted to the individual court positions.